breaking it, lead soil-pipes and ventilation-pipes on south fronts should be fixed in an angle where they will be screened from the sun, or where they will get some shade. Where there are no windows near such pipes, and where they are exposed to the rays of the sun, it is a good plan to fix them with telescope joints, to allow the pipes to expand and contract. 11. The plumber generally arrives upon the scene too late to ask for proper chases where he may so fix his pipes that each and all of them shall be readily accessible. But a good wide chase is very convenient for future examinations and other purposes. Each pipe should also be labelled. 12. Instead of securing "horizontal" pipes inside a house with lead tacks or wall-hooks, no matter what the size of the pipe may be, or what its purpose, it is better to support them on wood ledges or on boards hollowed out to receive them, to prevent the pipe sagging in any part. Plumbers rarely forget to give a soil-pipe or waste-pipe a fall, but they often forget to give service-pipes a fall, the consequence is, that when it is required to empty a servicepipe for repairs, or to prevent the water in it from freezing, it cannot be done. 13. This last severe winter (1890-91)' ought to stimulate plumbers to mend their ways in fixing service-pipes. The following extract on pipe-freezing is taken from my "Lectures." "No service-pipe should be fixed on the external nor on the internal face of an external wall, especially a wall facing the north or east, without being cased in and thoroughly protected. When possible, service-pipes should be fixed on the cross walls inside the house, and never on the main walls; for the cold penetrates through the external 1 In my own house there was not the slightest inconvenience from frost, owing to the care that was taken in fixing the servicepipes and cisterns ten years ago. walls and, reaching any pipe fixed on its face, though inside the house, freezes the water in it. If a pipe must come down on the internal face of a main wall, then an inch board should be put between the pipe and the wall, and the pipe cased up, and the casing filled with cocoa-nut fibre or silicated cotton. All service-pipes in roofs should be boxed in, and the boxes filled with this fibre. I do not like sawdust, for that decays; nor hair-felt, for that becomes full of moth, and rots; and besides, to cover pipes with such material where bad air could reach it would be to harbour smells, for the effluvia coming from persons using the water-closets would hang about such stuff and cause it to become 'stuffy.' Where the service-pipe could not be boxed or cased in, and where the cold air could reach it—as, e.g., under water-closet seats, where the pipe has to leave the casing to reach the supply-valve of the watercloset-the pipe should be bound round with two or three thicknesses of gaskin, and then be covered over with canvas, to protect it from frost. The cold air coming in through the overflow-pipe of the safe, and blowing upon an unprotected pipe, would soon freeze it. "If the positions of service-pipes are carefully considered, and the parts of questionable security protected in the manner described, no service-pipe in English houses need get frozen." As a strong frost in very severe weather, and when continued for many days, often penetrates into the ground for a depth of two feet or more, even in sheltered parts, all mains and services should be laid at least two feet under the surface of the ground. No service-pipe, whether it be the communication-pipe from a water company's main, or from a cistern, should be laid in any trench in which there is also a drain. The trenches for drains and service-pipes should be kept as far apart as possible. W CHAPTER XXVI. RAIN-WATER AND RAIN-WATER-PIPES. 1. ́HERE sewage is utilized for irrigation, and also where liquid sewage is discharged into soakagecesspools, the rain-water and the surface-water should be kept out of the soil-drain; except that in some cases, to save the expense of laying down what would be a costly piece of drain, and also where a rain-pipe has not much duty to perform, the rain-water may be turned into the soil-drain, as shown in fig. 107. 2. The disconnecting trap which should be selected for such a purpose should be one into which some fixture discharges, such as a bath, sink, or lavatory, to prevent the water-seal evaporating, which would at once set up air communication between the soil-drain and the rain-water drain. 3. In country houses there is generally little or no difficulty in separating the rain-water-drain from the soildrain. When the rain-water is not collected into a storage tank for any purpose, it can be kept quite separate from soil-drains and dirty-water-drains, and conducted to some place where it can gravitate away without inconvenience to anybody or damage to anything. 4. Where the water supplied to a house from a company's main, or spring, or well is hard, the rain-water from the roofs should be stored in an underground tank, for laundry and lavatory purposes, if for no other. The capacity of the storage tank should be equal to a month's consumption, or more; and where a house would be entirely depen dent upon rain-water for all purposes, the storage should be equal to the supply of from between twenty and thirty gallons of water per head per diem for forty or fifty days; and where a house is wisely provided with hot-water circulation and a bath, the maximum quantity should be arranged for. 5. Rain-water should be filtered before it is allowed to enter the storage tank, not for the purpose of purifying it, but for clarifying it. In fig. 106 a section of a fairly good filter is shown. A bed of well-washed fine gravel, to a depth of 6 in. or 9 in., Fig. 106.-RAIN-WATER FILTER. is laid over the whole of the floor of a cement-lined and brick-built chamber, of a capacity equal to passing the water through it without overflowing. In the receiving compartment a stratum of coarse gravel, about 6 in. deep, is laid upon the bed of fine gravel, and over this is placed a layer of shingle or broken flint, and then over the whole a floor of bricks or tiles is laid, to form a better surface for removing leaves and other foreign matter which may get washed into the filtering chamber. The outlet compartment is filled up with fine gravel, so that when a covering of bricks is placed over the gravel-to prevent a rush of water carrying it away-the upper surface of the floor shall stand an inch or two below the outlet or pipe which is to convey the filtered water to the storage tank. 6. Roberts's Patent Rain-Water Separator is a clever arrangement for preventing the first portion of the rainfall passing into the storing tank, and where we have fixed them we have found them of good benefit. 7. The soft water from the storage tank can be pumped up into cisterns fixed high enough to supply draw-offs to sinks on the bedroom floors for toilet purposes; and a branch pipe from the service main can be carried to a slate cistern on a lower level, for supplying the water for boiling vegetables, and for filling tea-kettles, etc. 8. Rain-water pipes are often fixed of larger size than necessary. An occasional stoppage in rain-waterpipes is caused by a defective grating, or by a grating with too large a mesh, or by a badly-fitted grating over the cesspool socket or entrance to the pipe, rather than by the smallness of the pipe. This is often the case in country houses, where leaves are blown on to the roof and washed down into the cesspool. There is not only the débris from the roof-the bits of mortar, the broken tiles or slates, the fallen leaves-there is the rust from the interior of the pipe, for this is the age of iron, and rain-water-pipes are generally made of cast iron. In times of little or no rain such things accumulate at the bottom of a stack of pipe and block it up; for it is seldom that any means are provided for the removal of such accumulations. Many years ago I invented and patented an access-shoe (as illustrated in fig. 107), which not only affords a ready access to the foot of a rain-waterpipe for cleaning it out, but gives it ventilation. Where a grating would suggest an improper use of the shoe, a movable cover can be substituted. Where the mouth of a rain-water-pipe is under or near a |